Eight speakers selected for TEDxTuscaloosa

The first TEDxTuscaloosa event now has its eight speakers to share “ideas worth spreading” on April 11. They will offer a mixture of voices on co-op innovation, post-tornado reconstruction ...

By Mark Hughes CobbStaff Writer | The Tuscaloosa News

The first TEDxTuscaloosa event now has its eight speakers to share “ideas worth spreading” on April 11. They will offer a mixture of voices on co-op innovation, post-tornado reconstruction, the need for meaningful debate in place of shouting matches, shifting health-care focus to prevention, turning hobbies into life-changing hustles and more.Those wishing to attend should get applications by Wednesday at www.tedxtuscaloosa.com. Only 100 attendees will be allowed in, and the cost is $50 each. Organizers will curate the crowd, hoping for a diverse mix, the better to stimulate discussion. About 32 people from as far away as New York, Texas, Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi put forth propositions to be among the speakers.“Honestly, The Tuscaloosa News article got a whole lot of people from Tuscaloosa to apply,” said Andrew Richardson, TEDxTuscaloosa organizer. “And that's ultimately what we wanted — people from here, or with a strong tie to the area.”Richardson, director of advancement and alumni relations at the University of Alabama's College of Community Health Sciences, obtained a one-year license to produce the event from TED, which began as annual conferences in 1990, with talks based around technology, entertainment and design.Applicants gave ideas of what they'd speak on, and the TEDxTuscaloosa committee did some follow-up, asking how they'd tie thoughts to the theme “ideas worth spreading.”Each of the final eight will be required to attend at least two sessions of speaker training, through UA's public speaking program. The eight speakers:-- Chris Hill, a chef and restaurant owner who earned bachelor's and master's degrees at UA. “He worked as a consultant for two years, hated it, quit and went to work as a chef,” Richardson said. Hill now owns a restaurant in Virginia, and is planning to open one soon in Atlanta.-- J. Palmer Brown, a UA business school professor who came to Tuscaloosa to help build the Mercedes plant, met his wife here and decided to stay. His talk will be on innovations, specifically that “co-ops may have some innovative models for communities for that are economically disenfranchised.”-- Pamela Payne Foster, a public health researcher at UA, will speak on promoting a paradigm shift in health to a greater focus on prevention.-- Josh Sahib, a “serial entrepreneur” who works by day as an instructional designer at UA but also started a video-production company, co-authored a book and, on weekends, might be found DJ-ing at a club. “His talk will be about 'ditch the hobbies, start a side hustle, build something, make something,' ” Richardson said. “Basically, make your hobby something you can one day potentially enjoy as much as your work.”-- Terrance Lonam, a student and debater at UA, will speak on how we should understand the true meaning of debate in a world deceived into thinking that debate means shouting heads on cable news.-- Linda Parsons, an accounting professor at UA, will talk about losing her Forest Lake home in the April 2011 tornado and about recovery, rebuilding not just houses but neighborhoods.-- Mark Raines, an educator who formerly taught here who was Richardson's inspiration for starting TEDxTuscaloosa. The idea was based on a TED talk Raines gave in San Diego about overcoming a stuttering problem that threatened to derail his career. The Tuscaloosa version will be a follow-up to that earlier talk, “in terms of how sharing what he was going through during that time, sharing personally through students and friends, changed his life, changed his perspective on teaching,” Richardson said.-- Alan Blum, a UA professor in family medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, will continue to narrow in on his focus, which begins with the idea of “How medical journals kill.” “I'm deferring the final draft until I get back from three talks in Abu Dhabi,” said Blum, one of the more experienced speakers on the list. “I've got like eight different themes. My wife really wants to talk about some of my own story, dealing with the tobacco industry, how, no matter what happens, they still wind up moving right along.”In the hot topic of anti-vaccination craziness, Blum said, “It all seems to have taken off when the most prestigious medical journal in the world (The Lancet) gave its imprimatur to fraud,” a discredited study linking vaccines to autism, then waited almost 12 years to print a retraction.“It's like when bad evidence comes out in court, and the judge says, 'The jury will disregard ... .' Of course the jury doesn't disregard. The damage has been done, damage that we're not even beginning to recover from.”As for the audience, limited to 100, applications rolled in to the site as soon as the process opened, Richardson said, but he'd like to see more, the better to spread diversity. The event was originally set for the River Market, but a scheduling conflict arose, so it's been moved to the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center's black box theater space.“We've got a layout that we think will work really well for 100,” he said.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.